


Seventh Child

by Defira



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 08:50:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8395258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: In Corellian superstition, five is lucky and seven is the gambler's choice. Ellaz is a seventh child, a gamble, a wild card- and sometimes a gamble doesn't quite pay off. A recruitment mission on Balmorra doesn't quite go as planned, and Aric confronts his commander over her behaviour. What he learns about the captain of Havoc Squad isn't quite what he expected.





	1. Chapter 1

In hindsight, Lieutenant Aric Jorgan thought that he probably should have expected his commanding officer to respond the way she did, but hindsight could be an asshole like that sometimes. Captain Hervoz had been far more than irritable for weeks now, snappish and quick-tempered even in the off hours when they weren’t in the field, and he really should have paid more attention to the warning signs before it had reached this point. 

As it was, it still took him by surprise when Captain Hervoz dropped her blaster on the factory ground- flashing neon warning sign, that one, she was reckless but she wasn’t careless- and turned to where Tanno Vik was grinning as he climbed to his feet, and punched him square in the jaw. 

His blood still surging from the adrenalin of the firefight with the imps, Aric had stared dumbfounded for a moment as Vik had staggered backwards, a splatter of dark blood colouring the duracrete floor. Ellaz hadn’t even hesitated, crowding after him and drawing her arm back to hit him again. 

_Fuck_. “Captain Hervoz!” he shouted, lifting his rifle again. “Stand down!” 

“You’ve got some _fucking_ nerve, Vik!” she snarled, ignoring Aric entirely. She swung at him, but he managed to dodge this one by the skin of his teeth. She didn’t seem at all intimidated by the fact that the weequay soldier was at least a foot taller than her, probably more because she was wearing her combat boots. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re playing at?”

Vik had a hand up to his bloodied face, and Aric couldn’t tell whether the blood dripping from his fingers was from his mouth or his nose or whether Ellaz had broken one of the spiky bits of plating on his chin. “What the fuck happened to just saying no?” he said, spitting a glob of blood onto the floor. “Stars, boss, it ain’t like I’m taking money from orphans-”

Ellaz hit him again, before he could swerve out of range of her fists, and this one had enough heft behind it that Vik staggered back onto one knee. 

Enough was enough. “ _Captain!_ ” He set his gun down on the ground with more care than she’d discarded hers and lunged the short distance between them, grabbing her by the arm as she wound up to strike Vik again. 

She snarled violently as he jerked her backwards, rounding on him as if she was thinking about offering him a taste of her fists as well.

“Captain Hervoz, you are out of line!” He knew her limits, and what counterbalances worked best on her- they’d sparred together in their down time often enough these last eighteen months, and he was pleased to say he could actually disarm her maybe once every four or five attempts. Those were times when she was level-headed, of course, and this definitely wasn’t one of those times; he had a hand on the back of her neck as he twisted her arm behind her back, his claws threatening ever so slightly as he gripped the collar of her armour. “Stand down!”

She almost fought him, he felt it- but the grip was such that if she tried to break free of his hold, she’d dislocate her shoulder in doing so, and after a moment the fight went out of her. He physically felt her go slack, her head hanging down towards the ground. 

For a long moment, there was only the ragged sounds of their breathing, his blood drumming loudly in his ears as he tried to come to terms with what had just happened. Tanno Vik had fumbled his way back to his feet, smearing his hand over his bloodied jaw, while Ellaz didn’t make any further move against either of them. 

He tasted the air, hoping that the tension had eased enough for him to mediate this mess, but Vik got in first. 

His laugh was leering, provocative, and Aric instantly felt his hackles go up from hearing it, and when he glared at the weequay he was grinning lewdly at them both. “That’s a good grip you got there, lieutenant,” he said, “you hold onto her like that when you’re fucking her, too? Bent over so she can take it better?” 

Aric saw red, too furious to be mortified by the implication that he and his captain were involved; Ellaz, likewise, seemed to take offence to the notion, if the way she snarled violently and went to pull against his hold before remembering the risk to her shoulder. 

Gritting his teeth so hard he could feel the sharper ones cutting into his lip, he said “Watch your mouth, rookie, or I’ll let her finish the job she started.” Squeezing warningly on Ellaz’s wrist, she didn’t lunge out of his reach the moment he let her go; she did pull her hand around to the front, however, rubbing at her wrist and glaring down at her bloodied knuckles. How much of it was hers and how much of it was Vik’s was still to be determined. 

“Yeah, and you gotta lotta nerve assuming I’m just gonna click my heels together and salute like a good little peon,” Vik said, smearing his bloodied hand on his jacket. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love a woman who can kick my ass, but a man has to have his limits.”

Ellaz snarled. “I swear to god, Vik-”

“Save it, cap. You ain’t interested in my brilliant plans, then whatever, your loss.” 

“Selling Balmorran hardware for a profit instead of turning it over to the rebellion you’re supposed to be helping isn’t brilliant, it just makes you an asshole!” 

“A _wealthy_ asshole, that’s the only part I care about.”

She probably would’ve tried something again if Aric hadn’t snared her around the wrist and held her back. “ _Captain_ ,” he said loudly, trying to cut through whatever stupidly blind rage had her in its grips, “sir, you are grossly out of line, stand _down_.” 

Ellaz rounded on him, but he’d expected that, stabbing a finger into her face.

“ _No_. Not negotiable Captain. We got what we came here for, we completed Vik’s mission, we’re done. I’m calling for an extraction.” 

____

Forex met them at the extraction point with a commandeered troop carrier, the blasted thing not the least bit subtle given that there were only three of them to extract; seemed pretty much par the course for Forex, though. Over the top and grandiose to the last. Dorne was with him, and she jumped out to assist them once the carrier was within a foot of the ground, her eyes wide as she took in the blood on the captain and their newest recruit. Wisely, she didn’t say anything, but she shared a look with him that told him all he needed. 

At least he wasn’t the only one with common sense in this half-baked outfit. 

Vik smirked again as he leered at Dorne. “ _Hello_ there, nurse,” he said, promptly earning him a slap to the back of the head from Aric as he passed him. 

Dorne wrinkled her nose unpleasantly at him, as if she’d encountered a locker full of something rotten and mouldy. “If you would be so kind as to sit towards the back of the craft, sir,” she said primly.

“So we can have ourselves a little privacy, heh?”

“Oh, no. Goodness no. I just don’t want to be near you, and I’d rather you sit as far from me as possible.” 

It was the sort of comment that Ellaz might normally have cackled at, but she was blank eyed and almost hollow as she moved through the empty rows up to the copilot’s seat. Forex had apparently ripped out the pilot’s seat in order to fit his not insubstantial girth into the carrier. No response at all. 

Elders damn it all. 

The transport lifted up into the air with a jolt, and Elara almost tentatively took a seat next to Aric as they headed back towards Bugtown. “May I ask, sir,” she said under her breath, “what exactly it is that transpired here?”

Aric rubbed a hand wearily over his face, staring up towards the front of the craft. “I wish I knew,” he muttered.

The ride back towards the rebel entrenchment took place mostly in silence, with the occasional inappropriate commentary offered up from Vik at the back of the carrier. Aric filled in Sergeant Dorne as best as he could, trying not to let either Ellaz or Vik overhear him; most likely the two of them already knew what he was doing, because it wasn’t like it was the sort of thing you could keep under wraps, but he still didn’t want to go blabbing it at the top of his lungs like some green recruit with barracks gossip. 

When they landed, Elara was already at Ellaz’s shoulder, a hand rather forcefully guiding her from the ship. “Sir, if you’ll be so good as to follow me, I’ll get you patched up so you can report to General Garza.”

She was good, he liked that about her; she always managed to phrase things in a way that made her sound so pleasant and polite, but left no room for doubt about the fact that she was giving a direct order. She’d make a good squad leader one day, Dorne would. 

Vik made a great show of disembarking, lifting his hands in the air as if he expected rounds of applause at his appearance. Aric quite pointedly shoved him in the back to keep him moving, and once he was confident that Ellaz and Vik weren’t about to get into round two back on the _Defender_ , he returned to the carrier to help Forex take it back to the airfield on the far side of the base. 

The tension on the _Defender_ was palpable when he got back, the air sour in his nostrils; sticking his head into the medbay he found Dorne diligently working on patching up Vik’s face, and he wasn’t at all surprised to find the weequay out cold on the bed. 

At Aric’s look, Elara just raised her eyebrows. “I must have given him too strong a dose of the standard numbing sedative,” she said mildly. “How utterly unprofessional of me- clearly I shall have to brush up on my knowledge of weequay chemical tolerances for future incidences.” 

He snorted. “Hervoz?”

“Captain Hervoz retired to her quarters some time ago after I saw to her injuries.”

“She spoke to Garza yet?”

“Not that I am aware of. I did advise against it until she had had a chance to compose herself.”

Aric rolled his shoulders, dread settling over him like a wet jacket- it was uncomfortable no matter how he looked at it all, and even taking it off wouldn’t make the sensation go away anytime soon. “I’ll talk to her,” he said gruffly, stepping back out of the room before he had a chance to reconsider and find a way to back out of it. 

He swung past the armory first to stow his rifle, berating himself for doing so without taking the time to oil and wipe it first. _Come back to it later_ , he told himself, as he stripped off his combat jacket and tossed it on the chair in the corner. 

Nothing else for it. 

The Captain’s door was closed but not locked, according to the infopad beside the door, and he knocked loudly before opening it; he didn’t wait for her response, because he didn’t want her to have time to get up and lock herself in, but it didn’t seem like he should have been worried, going off of her body language. 

She was seated at her desk, staring almost sullenly in his direction as she watched him enter her room. Elara had treated her hand, a painful row of stitches over the back of her knuckles from where she’d broken the skin on Vik’s plate scale face. Her eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, clearly from crying, and even as he stood in the door and watched her she scrubbed furiously at her cheeks again, sniffing loudly and scowling as she tried to keep herself under control. She’d stripped down out of her armour at some point, nursing a beer as she sat barefoot in a black tank top and grey slacks. 

You wouldn’t have picked her as the leader of one of the most elite special ops groups in the Republic, looking at her like that. Now she just looked painfully frail, all jagged edges and pieces broken off.

He cleared his throat, even though she had to know he was already there. “So, here’s what I don’t get,” he said, ears flicking back slightly when she winced at the sound of his voice. Hungover already, or just cringing at the prospect of the conversation? “I’ve read your file, sir, and I’ve had the privilege of seeing you in action these last eighteen months or so. You’re one of the best damn conflict resolution officers in the Republic, and your hostile negotiation skills are second to none.”

She lifted the bottle halfheartedly, not looking at him. “Cheers for the ringing endorsement,” she said hoarsely, as if she’d cried so hard she’d lost her voice or gone a good way in that direction. 

“You were singled out for Havoc in the first place because they wanted the best negotiator in the Republic in the best squad in the Republic, to defuse volatile situations and avoid violent escalations,” he continued, noting the way her lips quirked as if she was fighting off a bitter smile. She reeked of alcohol and sweat, and buried under that were the more subtle hints of her mood, the scent-based cues that were all but imperceptible to humans but might as well have been painted in blazing red paint across the side of the Senate tower for how hard they slammed into his more delicate feline senses. She was ashamed of herself, and angry, but confusingly the overriding emotion drowning out all the others was _grief_. “So maybe I’m a little bit confused as to why you’ve spent the last few weeks jumping on every opportunity for a fight you can find, and why you took out your temper on Vik like you were looking to break his jaw for smiling at you wrong.”

The flicker of a smirk appeared again. “Maybe that’s all it was,” she said, taking a long pull on the bottle. Her voice shook, as if she was fighting off more tears. “Maybe I just didn’t like the way he looked at me.” 

Aric fought the urge to roll his eyes. “You’re an incorrigible flirt, Captain, and you’ve been in mood since before we even landed on Balmorra. So the way I figure, there’s something going on that you aren’t talking about-”

“Ain’t paying you to pry into my personal affairs, Jorgan.”

“You’re not paying me at all, _Captain_ ,” he said, stressing her title after she’d resorted to the casual intimacy of using his name. “The _Republic_ pays me, and one of the things they pay me for is to keep this squad functioning at peak efficiency, and to report any unbecoming conduct that might jeopardise Havoc or bring further scrutiny down on us.” 

She took a slow swallow of the beer, her short hair falling over her face and shielding her expression from view. “You gonna rat on me now, Jorgan?” she asked quietly. 

He stiffened at the pang of sympathy that soft tone roused in his gut, jaw clenched as his ears flicked in annoyance. “Disorderly conduct in itself is a potential court martial offence,” he said, frustrated enough that the words came out sharp and dripping with disdain. Figuring it to be worth the risk, he stepped fully into her room and closed the door behind him; she tensed slightly at the sound, but she didn’t glance his way. “As a senior officer, attacking a subordinate could see you dishonourably discharged, or even jailed. What in every drowned and nesting hell were you _thinking?_ ”

Ellaz made a soft sound, like she might have started to cry and bit it back at the last second. He waited, because he was damn well frustrated with her right now and he wasn’t going to coddle her when she’d made a bad decision. Just because they’d been getting along famously these last few months didn’t make a lick of difference in a situation like this- she was still his commanding officer, and she’d fucked up bad. He had a duty to perform and it sure as hell wasn’t giving her a shoulder to cry on while she worked through whatever nerfshit she was bottling up. 

He waited, and eventually she sighed, the sound almost a chuckle. It was bitter, and drowning in self-loathing and grief, so tangible in the air that he could almost taste it when he breathed in. “I don’t like Balmorra,” she whispered, as if that explained everything. 

Elders fucking damn it, of course she’d be elusive and obscure even when he was trying to drag the truth out of her. “Captain, we’ve got a very angry weequay in the med bay at the moment still threatening to lodge an official complaint against you, and as a witness to the altercation I have to report on it to Command. I’m gonna need something a little better from you than _‘I don’t like Balmorra’_.” 

“It’s too bad, it’s all you’re getting out of me-” 

“ _Ellaz_ ,” he snapped, his patience wearing thin. “I am _trying_ to be understanding here, but if you don’t have any other defence for your behaviour than that you don’t like this place, then I’m not gonna stick my neck out for you.”

She didn’t say anything, and he was just about to throw his hands in the air and damn her for her obstinance, when he noticed that her shoulders were shaking. His ears flicked as he concentrated, and he could hear the change to her breathing, the faintly ragged in and out of someone desperately trying not to make a noise as they cried. 

He felt his anger subside in the face of that, abruptly awkward at the prospect of intruding on a very private and painful moment for her. “Captain,” he tried again, gentler this time, but she shook her head violently, finally looking up at him.

Her cheeks were tear streaked again, her eyes shining bright from more waiting to spill over. “You wanna know why I don’t like Balmorra, Jorgan?” she said, a pair of tears falling from her eyes even as she glared at him. “You wanna know why I’m in such a bad mood? Because my brother died here, Jorgan.”

Aric hesitated, somewhat perplexed by the statement. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for your loss, Captain,” he said gruffly. 

“My brother fought for the Republic and died for the Republic and died for _Balmorra_ and yet all anyone wants to say to me is to spit in my face and tell me that nobody gives a shit about Balmorra and nobody-” She broke off sharply, a sob hidden behind her hand, and something in him cracked a little to see a woman he saw as indomitable hurting so badly. 

“I wanted to think I could do it,” she whispered after a moment. “I wanted to think that I could come here, and I’d be able to do some good, and put his ghost to rest and move on, but I just...” She visibly shuddered. “I _can’t_.”

Fucking damn it. 

He glanced around and spotted the trunk at the foot of her bed, nudging it with his foot until it was close enough for him to sit sort of beside her. “Do you need to talk about it?” he asked awkwardly.

She sniffed, her hand covering her eyes. “It’s a long story.”


	2. Chapter 2

Seven was a good number for Corellians, but five was better. There were seven planets in the Corellian System, but only five of them were habitable. Everyone knew that the seventh rider was usually a lucky bet to have when it came time to put money on the swoop races, but the fifth rider was a sure thing. One of the stars on the Corellian flag had five points, whereas you could only get to seven points by adding up every star and dividing them down- you could do it, and many a superstitious individual would swear by it, but the five was right there. It was clearly the lucky choice. 

Five was the safe choice, the better choice, and seven was the gambler’s choice. Seven planets when two were dead meant you were erring on the edge of danger. The seventh rider in a race had more people to beat than a race with only five. 

Five was safe. 

Seven meant you were gambling against greater odds for a greater prize. And if you _were_ the seventh- the seventh rider, the seventh player, the seventh child- then you were a gamble all in yourself. 

Ellaz was the seventh. 

Her birth might not otherwise have been unusual, had she not been born in the dawn of a new war, but the slumbering Sith Empire had roused itself, ravenously hungry after three hundred years at rest. Her mother had already been seven months pregnant with her when word had reached Corellia of the return of the dark lords, and the subsequent slaughter that had begun in the Outer Rim, and when she was born seven weeks later, it was to a galaxy drastically changed to the one her brothers had been born to. In fact, she always used to say- when she was growing up- that she was as old as the war, and it became a pretty good way for her to measure not just how old she was, but who she was as a person. _My name is Ellaz and I am five and a bit and that’s almost the same as the war_. 

She had six older brothers, and she knew from a young age that there were stories about girls like her. The princess without a voice, trying to save her older brothers from a witch. The seventh child, born with the promise of greatness and magic. Born with darkness and ill-fortune nipping at her heels, dancing along the edge of danger. 

Born at the end of life as they knew it, the dark clouds of war gathering on the horizon. 

But this was Corellia, the centre of civilization and the birthplace of democracy, a very sensible place indeed and the closest thing they had to magic here in Coronet City was the Green Jedi. True, people were _superstitious_ but that was very _different_ , you see- chance and luck and the like were very different to the greater powers that ruled the distant Jedi Order and the even more ominous Sith Council. Chance and luck and the like made _sense_ , while magic seemed quite unpredictable and far too dangerous to toy with. There was a war on, after all, and if there were witches hiding in the corners of the galaxy, they weren’t looking to make deals with little Corellian girls about the safety of their brothers. 

When you grew up with six older brothers, it was more about keeping _yourself_ out of trouble. 

There was Ban and Jaka, who were two and three years older than her respectively, and who were the most likely to let her in on their pranks and mischief, but also most likely to be the ones responsible for her skinned knees and their own black eyes. Jaka had a knack for racing, and Father had always indulged him- right up until the point when he’d crashed a borrowed speeder into a lightpole down near Axial Park, leaving himself and his sister in the medcentre for the better part of a week.

There was Navin, oh-so-serious Navin who scowled more than he smiled, buried in his texts and his lessons as if knowledge could nourish him in place of food, and who showed aptitude with the Force from a young age.

Mother and Father made the decision very early on to see him placed with the Green Jedi instead of the proper Jedi, because if he was bound to protect Corellia, there was no chance of him being packed off to the war. And given that there was no possible way that the war would _ever_ reach as far as Corellia itself, Navin would be safe. When the Jedi came knocking, Navin had already been wearing green robes for nearly eighteen months. 

Ellaz never remembered him wearing any other colour. 

Before Navin came the twins, Kiva and Kiran, who delighted in being interchangeable and who confused a young Ellaz terribly until she was old enough to tell them apart. They were magnificent mechanics and engineers, tinkering with everything in the estate that they could get their hands on, and they were already interns at Hervoz Architectural- in the starship division, no less- by the time Ellaz _was_ old enough to tell them apart. 

And oldest of all, at thirteen years her senior, was Omar. Omar, whom she loved the most out of all of her brothers, who always seemed bright and happy and enthusiastic in a way that made her feel like the most important person in the whole galaxy. 

Which is why it hurt so bad when the war took him away from her, and she stopped counting the war for her age, and started counting it for the number years since it’d taken her brother. Seven was good, but five was better, and sometimes the dice wanted to roll back at the last second and snatch all your winnings away. Sometimes there were seven planets, but two of them were dead worlds. 

She was a seventh child, and if this were a story, she would have found a witch and traded her voice to bring her brother back.

If she’d met a witch, she might have taken the deal.

____

Ellaz ran down the back stairs to the kitchen, the smell of fresh coconut barfi in the air; peering around the doorway, she saw a good half a dozen plates scattered over the counters, all piled high with mounds of the precious confectionary. Ama had clearly been busy that morning, and it wasn’t even her birthday. The scent of coconut was heaviest, but that plate of green barfi closest to her just had to be pistachio. 

Leaning further into the room, she spotted her grandmother at the stove, stirring a large pot that undoubtedly had the base sugar syrup needed for the recipe. Her back was to the door, her long white hair bound up in a pair of white braids that were looped up on the sides of her head. Ellaz loved it when Ama let her brush her hair for her, and Ama promised her that one day she was going to have hair as long and lovely as hers.

She loved barfi more, though. 

Ama was humming softly to herself as she cooked, and Ellaz timed her moment perfectly, creeping from the safety of the hallway and towards the closest plate. The pistachio barfi sat so temptingly close, and if she reached up on her tiptoes she could reach the plate and-

“I can tell there’s a sticky-fingered little babai in my kitchen,” Ama said, not even turning around. Ellaz shrieked with laughter, ducking out of sight and pressing her hands to her mouth to stifle her giggles. “Mmm, the babai sounds like a sneaky little monkey-lizard, from all that laughing. I didn’t know I had a monkey-lizard for a grandchild.” 

Scrambling forward across the floor on her hands and knees, Ellaz peered around the corner of the cabinets, shrieking with laughter again when she came face to face with Ama’s toes. She fell backwards onto her bottom, giggling as she looked up and up into Ama’s face, her hands on her hips and a faint smear of green paste on her apron. “Look at that, I was right- a sticky-fingered monkey-lizard, right here in my own kitchen!”

“Ama!” 

“And just what were you thinking was going to happen, little lizard, hmm? Did you think your old Ama wouldn’t notice if you made off with her precious barfi?” 

“I was only going to have a teeny tiny little piece, Ama, a little piece, you wouldn’t even have seened me, I swear!” 

“Oh, but I’ve seen you now, little lizard, haven’t I?” Ama bent down so quickly that Ellaz didn’t have a chance to escape, shrieking delightedly as Ama scooped her up into her arms and spun her around. “Sneaking up on an old lady, for shame, my little babai.”

“No, Ama, I wasn’t sneaking!” She threw her arms around her neck and hugged tight. “I promise!” 

Ama chuckled, hefting her up onto her hip so she could hold her with one arm. “You promise, now, do you?” she said. “And I suppose you also weren’t trying to get yourself an armful of barfi either, were you?”

Ellaz squirmed around in her arms, trying to see all the coloured platters on the counter. “Um, what are they for, Ama? Can I eat them?” 

“You may have one, my little babai, because you will spoil your dinner otherwise.”

“What are they for? Is it my birthday?”

“Do you think it’s your birthday, little lizard?”

“Um, maybe? I don’t remember. Can it be my birthday?” 

Ama laughed again, kissing her soundly on the forehead. “You may choose one piece of barfi, my love, and that’s it.”

Ellaz scrunched up her nose. “Only one?”

“Only one.”

“Can I have the almond one, then?”

There was a crash by the door to the greenhouse, and a moment later two little shadows came sprinting through the kitchen. Ban and Jaka, both of them filthy from playing outdoors, made a beeline for the plates piled high with sweets. 

“Ah hah, you little terrors!” Ama had a wooden spoon in her hand seemingly from nowhere, batting at the grubby fingers as they pawed at the confectioneries. “Some kind of little sithspawn in my kitchen, ancestors have mercy.” 

“Ama, Ama, what are you making all the barfi for?”

“Ama, Jaka said that um you were making the barfi only for him and that’s not right is it, Ama can I have some barfi?”

“No, Ama, don’t listen to him-”

“Boys!” At Ama’s thunderous call, they both fell silent, but they both still fidgeted incessantly, all but crawling onto the kitchen counters as they pretended they weren’t trying to touch the sweets. “Did you lose your manners outside in the dirt?”

In perfect unison, in a not at all precocious sing-song voice, they said “ _Sorry, Ama_.”

She sighed, but she sounded amused. “I suppose you think that means you can have sweets now,” she said.

“Please?”

“Can we, Ama? You said Ella could have one!”

She laughed again, depositing Ellaz onto her feet before turning back to the plates. “One, and then you leave your poor old Ama alone.”

“I want rosewater!”

“Did you make pistachio? Ama, is there pistachio?”

For a moment there was chaos as Ellaz was all but trampled underfoot by her much bigger and more boisterous older brothers, but the moment they had their precious barfi in hand they were out the door like flashes of lightning again, gone to play and cause havoc and mischief elsewhere. Ama handed her a golden coloured square, the edges just ever so crumbly; Ellaz licked the crumbs from her fingers, breathing in the smell of the treat. “Don’t eat it too quickly and make yourself sick, babai,” Ama said, kissing her on the forehead again. She turned her around by the shoulders and patted her on the back, pushing her gently towards the door. “Come now, run off and play, and leave your poor old Ama to her cooking.” 

Like she needed to be told twice. 

Ellaz ran off gleefully, clutching the golden treat in her hands like it was precious treasure. She could still hear Ban and Jaka yahooing somewhere nearby, and the thought of them trying to get their hands on her barfi made her stop and stuff it into her pocket, smooshing it until it fit and was safely out of sight. 

Content with her schemes, she skipped down the hallway and away from the kitchen, wondering whether or not her nanny would still be looking for her; she didn’t mind her lessons in the nursery, but she wanted to play outside with her brothers. 

The door to Papa’s study was open as she wandered towards it, and that delighted her- Papa was always so busy, and sometimes he had to work at the firm very late, and sometimes he didn’t like it when she came in to see him while he was working in his study. But if his door was open, maybe he wouldn’t mind?

“I’ve made up my mind,” came Omar’s voice from through the half open door, and Ellaz trailed to a halt at the sound of her favourite brother’s voice. “I’m eighteen now, I’m legally allowed to enlist, and it’s what I want to do.” 

“Omar, please be reasonable,” their mother said, clearly distressed. Ellaz plopped down onto her knees in the hallway, pulling the half squashed piece of barfi from her pocket and absently chewing on it, seemingly indifferent to the pieces of fluff and lint it had acquired in her pocket. “This is not a time for foolish dreams about heroics-”

“I’m not being foolish, Mama, I just want to do the right thing. People are dying out there.”

There was a creak of leather, probably from Papa’s fancy old chair. He did love his fancy chair, but Ellaz thought it was too hard. “Omar,” Papa said, his voice taking on that serious tone that meant that he was grumpy. “I understand the youthful drive to find something meaningful to do with your life, but this is ridiculous. You have-”

“Dad-”

“Excuse me, Omar, please do not interrupt me while I am speaking. It is disrespectful, and we have raised you better.”

After a moment of silence, Omar said quietly “Apologies, Father.” 

“Thank you. Now, this decision to enlist, it’s nothing more than some boyhood fantasy you’ve concocted, and I’ll not allow it. You have a very promising career as a test pilot at the firm, and you have a good future lined up for you. I will not allow you to throw it all away on some childish whim.”

Ellaz wanted to be a pilot. She wanted to fly like Omar did. He had so many toy ships in his room, some of them in fancy glass boxes, she wasn’t allowed to touch those ones. Sometimes when Omar wasn’t busy with his studies, they went down to Axial Park and he took his toy ships and he’d fly them around for her to chase them. Just last week they’d gotten one stuck in a tree, and Ellaz had laughed and laughed and laughed when Omar had torn his pants trying to get it down. 

Papa was right, Omar was a very good pilot. She didn’t know what else they were talking about, but she knew he was definitely a good flyer. 

“With all respect, Father, you cannot stop me- I’m a legal adult, and I’m going to enlist. Just because the war isn’t here in Corellia doesn’t mean it won’t come here-”

“Omar.”

“-and I won’t sit on my hands and let other people suffer for my freedom,” he continued. “The war has been going for over five years now, how long must we turn a blind eye before it becomes too much?” 

“Omar, please,” their mother said, “there is no need to risk your life, we’re perfectly safe here-”

“And there are millions, maybe billions of other people who don’t have that luxury right now, Mama. Why do I get to sit in comfort while they suffer?”

She heard Papa’s chair squeak again, and her mother gasped. She munched on the barfi, wondering whether they would notice if she sneaked a look in the room. 

“Omar,” Papa said quietly, his voice very serious, “I will only tell you this once. You are not, under any circumstances, to enlist in the Republic army.”

“You can’t stop me, Father.”

“I can, and I will. If you think you can live under my roof and- and... and throw all of the time and the love that your mother and I have spent raising you back in our faces by throwing your life away so recklessly-”

“I’m not being reckless! I’m defending my family from tyrants!” 

“No, absolutely not, I forbid it.”

There was a large screechy scratchy noise, as if someone had stood up abruptly and pushed their chair back against the shiny wooden floors in Papa’s study. Very fancy, they were almost like a mirror. “I’m sorry, Father.”

There came the sound of footsteps, and Ellaz scrambled backwards, suddenly aware that she was about to be caught eavesdropping; some of the barfi fell out of her pocket and she accidentally smooshed it into the rug with her knee. Oh no, Mama was going to get so upset about that, unless she could hide and convince someone that it was Ban’s fault instead-

The door came fully open and she froze, eyes wide as she waited for the shout of discovery, but it didn’t come. Omar was in the doorway with his face turned away from her, back into the room- he was very tall, Omar was, taller than Papa, and she liked it when he gave her a ride on his shoulders- and from inside the room she could hear more chairs squeaking. 

“Omar, if you walk out of this room, out of this house, you will no longer be my son.” 

Ellaz scrunched up her nose. How silly. Omar looked just like Papa, and he had Ama’s big nose. Of course he was still going to be their son. Of course he was her brother. 

“Then for the good of the Republic, and the freedom of the people it stands for, I must renounce myself as your son,” Omar said.

There was a sound from inside the room like Mama was crying. “Omar, please-”

“I shall go and pack my things,” he said, closing the door and turning to head down the hallway. He froze when he spotted her on the ground.

Ellaz stared up at him, her nerves on high alert; she tried to rub at the spot on the rug, hoping he wouldn’t notice it. When he didn’t speak, she rubbed it some more. “It was Jaka,” she said solemnly, glancing down to see if the stain was going away. 

Omar broke out into a grin, his eyes crinkling at the sides. “Is that so, Ella-Bella?”

She glanced down, nodding seriously. “Yes, it was Jaka, I saw him.” 

“You wouldn’t happen to be telling a tricksy tale, would you, Ella-Bella?” he asked, crouching in front of her. 

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “no, I definitely saw him.” 

He chuckled, and she was relieved that he believed her. “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t we go back to my room, and you can play with one of my starfighters while I pack.”

She took his hand when he offered to help her up, circling around behind him to climb up onto his back. She giggled when he hefted her up into the air, clinging tight to his neck as he stomped down the hallway towards the living quarters. “Are you going on a trip?” she asked, shrieking with laughter when he pretended to fall, her stomach dropping with the rush. “Can I come too?” 

He dropped her on the unmade bed and she screeched as she bounced, giggling delightedly as he ruffled her hair. “Don’t really think it’s a trip you’ll want to come on, Ella,” he said, a half full satchel already on the bed by the pillow. 

Ellaz crawled over the pillows to look inside. “I could fit in here,” she said knowledgeably. 

“Mm, can you? In you go then!” He scooped her up one handed, managing to get the zip done up halfway as she kicked and squirmed and laughed. “I thought you wanted to come with me?”

“ _Omar!_ ”

“ _Ellaz!_ ” he said in a mimicking tone, poking his tongue out at her when she poked hers out at him. He tossed her a toy starfighter, the paint worn along the sides from years of love. “Here,” he said, “you can have this.”

She snatched it up eagerly, crawling out of the satchel and moving up to the top of the pillows. Omar began to open his drawers, tossing things haphazardly in without much care for how it was packed. Ellaz sat on the pillows and made laser noises as she made the starfighter crash into the bedsheets. 

“Not a very good pilot there, Ella-Bella,” he said, grinning as he shook his head.

Frowning as she concentrated fiercely on the toy, she said “Um, this is a sith pilot. He got shotted by a Corellia ship.”

“Did he now?” 

“Yes.”

“Was the Corellian pilot me?”

She sighed in exasperation at him. “You aren’t fighting sith, Omar.”

He stopped what he was doing and crouched down in front of her. “I’m going to be, though, Ella,” he said, his expression solemn. “I’m going to go away to be a pilot, and fight the sith.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “When will you be back?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Ella-Bella,” he said. “If the war doesn’t wrap up soon, I might be gone for a long time.”

“Will you bring me presents?”

“Tell you what- how ‘bout you keep my ship safe for me until I get back?” 

____

Five was lucky, and seven was the gambler’s choice- which meant that sometimes, the gamble didn’t pay off.

Ellaz was five when Omar left for the war, and seven when he died. 

When he died, the ship he was serving on destroyed in an Imperial ambush in the skies above Balmorra, they had no body to mourn. Nothing but the official notice of death, crisp and white and as fancy as the invitations her parents sometimes got to society balls, on actual proper flimsi and everything, instead of just an electronic message. His belongings had been lost with him, his dog tags, his ID chip, his helmet that he’d let her paint dumb little swirls on before he’d left. 

For good luck, she’d said, and he’d laughed.

He was gone, as completely as if he’d never existed. 

They had a small trunk, full of his childhood books and toys- although in a family with six other children, most had been recycled and reloved rather thoroughly. There were two sporting medals, and a fancy model YG from the time they’d gone to the launch of the new line, and they’d all been given one of their own by the company president. Omar had painted his a garish green, declaring it to be piloted by a Green Jedi war hero who sounded suspiciously like him. 

Without a body to mourn and celebrate, her parents quietly had the small handful of mementos condensed down to artificial diamonds, the ceremony far more awkward than Omar deserved; it wasn’t like their neighbours had the grounds to judge them, though. On every street, in every apartment building, there were families missing sons and daughters and children, friends who would not return, loved ones who were gone forever. 

At least they had the means to celebrate him in some small way, even if it was less than he deserved. 

One diamond went to the mural in the hallway of the estate, the long and winding story of her family’s history over the centuries. Each worn stone represented a life lived well, the brighter ones more recent and more painful to remember; Omar’s stone was the newest, going right after their grandfather’s, and Ellaz would sit and run her fingers over it in the hope that wearing the stone down would make the memories not as sharp either. 

Instead the sharp edges of the diamond cut her fingertips, and she’d press the bleeding skin against her shirt to make it stop. 

The other diamonds went to family, as was tradition- you carried your loved ones with you, you carried their memories, and they lived on with you in spirit. There wasn’t enough for everyone, because without a body they couldn’t make enough diamonds. Papa had cufflinks, and Mama and Ama had diamond hair pins. 

Ellaz got a ring, a plain gold band with a single stone in it- the only thing left of her brother. It was too big for her childish hands, so she wore it on a chain around her neck until she grew into it. Maybe, she thought, maybe by the time she grew into it, the memories wouldn’t hurt so much. Maybe by the time she was big enough for her brother’s memory, maybe it wouldn’t feel so overwhelming. 

She collected ships, just like Omar had.

The war continued.


	3. Chapter 3

Ellaz blinked as she looked down at the holomessage in her inbox. It was from the University of Coronet City, and it was a week earlier than she’d expected. Her stomach lurched as she saw the subject line, and she glanced up quickly to make sure that no one had been looking over her shoulder when it had appeared. Her mother and father were seated at the far end of the table, Papa sipping his caf as he scrolled through the daily stock analysis that had come through from his assistant, and Mama was on the holo to Navin. Kiva and Kiran didn’t live at home anymore, both of them happily married with families of their own, and Jaka was on tour for the last leg of the pro-racing circuit for this year's season. That left Ama, whose voice she could hear coming from the greenhouse, singing an old song to herself as she worked, and Ban, who had yet to appear from his bedroom for the day. 

Oh, and Cole. Cole Cantarus, her boyfriend of three years and fiancé of two months. Who was looking at her shrewdly over the top of his own caf mug, his eyebrows raised slightly as if he knew immediately that she was up to something. 

She smiled awkwardly at him, averting her gaze quickly. He knew her too well. She closed her messenger program before he could ask what it was she’d seen that had upset her, trying to casually go back to her breakfast before he could make a big deal about it in front of her parents. 

“Navin, I just do not understand why they do not let you have your own apprentice-”

“Padawan, mother, the term is padawan.”

“Does the name matter? They do not give you one, and it is an insult to your talents.”

Ellaz felt Cole’s foot brush against her ankle beneath the table, and she choked slightly on her dosa; she glared at him from over the top of the pancake, and he smiled innocently at her. She jerked her head slightly in the direction of her parents, hoping that the message _‘don’t fool around in front of my folks’_ was abundantly clear in her expression. They were good about him staying the night, but she didn’t want to push her luck. 

She heard Navin sigh wearily. “Mother, I’m quite happy in my current role, and I have no desire to have a take on a snot-nosed, snivelling child right now.”

“Navin, ancestors have mercy, you bite your tongue- if you will not give me a grandchild-”

Navin and Ellaz groaned in unison this time. “Kiva and Kiran have already given you five grandchildren,” Ellaz said pointedly.

“-then the least you could do to soothe my poor broken heart is to give me an apprentice child that I may dote on instead.”

“ _Padawan_ , mother.” 

“What does it matter what they are called, since I will clearly never know the joy of seeing you with one.” 

Their father sighed, not looking up from his datapad. “Dihja,” he said mildly. 

“What? He hasn’t taken any vows of celibacy, and there are men who could carry a child for him-”

“ _Mother!_ ” Navin looked utterly mortified, and Ellaz groaned and hid her face in her hands. When she sneaked a look through her fingers, she could see Cole grinning like a demon while her father stared flatly at her mother. 

Well at least _someone_ was enjoying themselves. 

She finished up her breakfast in a hurry and tried to put the message waiting for her out of her mind, but apparently she wasn’t going to be so lucky. “So,” Cole said casually, as they made their way down the street towards the tram stop, “you gonna tell me what that was in your holos that had you all wide-eyed at breakfast?” 

She nudged him in the side, grinning awkwardly as he smiled at her. “Who says it wasn’t just some weird porn spam?”

“Hey look, if you’re not sharing the weird porn, then what kind of relationship is this?” 

That got a laugh out of her, and she tucked herself under his arm for a hug. “Well, I suppose, if you must know-”

“I must. I’m going to die of curiosity otherwise, and then you’d have to explain to CorSec why their most promising new recruit is dead.” 

She turned into the station, hands stuffed into her pockets as they made their way upstairs to wait for the mag-tram. “Okay, well,” she said slowly, “it was from the University of Coronet City. I’ve been accepted into the law school.” 

It took her by surprise when he threw his arms around her, and she squeaked when he squeezed her so hard that he lifted her off the ground. “Baby! That’s great news, I’m so proud of you!” He spun her around, laughing. “Look at you, my fiancée the lawyer-” 

“Put me down, you ass!” she said, but she was laughing. “I’m not a lawyer yet, I haven’t even accepted the position yet!” 

“It’s perfect though, it’s all perfect- I’ll be the head of CorSec, and you’ll be the city’s most renowned defense attorney, and we’ll have terse standoffs for the media and they’ll write gossip pages about us mixing business and pleasure-”

“Cole, I’m going to specialise in humanitarian work, you know this.” 

“Shh,” he said, kissing her on the forehead, “you’re ruining my fantasies. My sexy, sexy fantasies about the chief of police and the high-profile lawyer having a torrid affair in the backrooms of the courthouse-”

“Does it really count as an affair if we’re married, though?” she asked, hefting her bag up higher on her shoulder as the tram came humming around the corner towards their stop. The wall of air washed over them first, buffeted her hair and her clothes for a moment before it pulled to an easy stop. The carriage was busy with morning commuters, and they stood near the back of the pod; Ellaz couldn’t reach the overhead handgrips, so she just clung tight to Cole’s shirt instead. 

“I don’t need your lawyer logic coming in here and messing up my perfectly decent fantasies,” he said, wrapping his free arm around her back to hold her steady around the corners. They fell silent for most of the trip, but towards the end she heard him laugh, and when she glanced up at him he was grinning so brilliantly that she felt her heart ache. “I’m so proud of you, baby,” he said, and she felt it, she honestly felt his love and his pride in her. 

She wished she felt something other than uneasy.

____

It was nearly midnight, and Ellaz couldn’t sleep. 

It wasn’t like she hadn’t had any warning that tonight was coming- she’d had almost thirteen years to prepare herself for it, after all, but knowing it was creeping up on her and having it stare her in the face was something entirely different. 

Omar had been twenty years, two months and thirteen days old when he’d died. She sat in silence, watching the clock tick over, listening to Cole’s quiet snores behind her, and tried to feel something over than complete and utter dread. 

The clock on the wall ticked over to midnight; as of right now, she was twenty years, two months and _fourteen_ days old. She’d lived for longer than Omar. 

She didn’t know at what point she’d started crying, or how long she’d been crying for when Cole mumbled groggily behind her and sat up. 

“Ella?” She could hear him fumbling awkwardly to sit up, still half asleep. “Come on, baby, come back to bed.”

She stayed at the end of the bed, staring at the clock, hating every single second that passed that pushed her past Omar. She shouldn’t be older than him, she should never have caught up to him, this was _wrong_ -

“Ella?” Cole had crawled half free of the blankets and nuzzled against her shoulder. “You okay, baby?” 

“I- no, I’m not,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what, baby?” He sat up, tucking his arm around her shoulders and kissing her forehead. 

“ _Any_ of it, Cole, I- I can’t- it isn’t _right!_ ”

“Hey, shh,” he said, running his hand up and down her arm as he held her to him. “You’re not making a lot of sense Ella-bella, did you have a bad dream? What is it that you can’t do? You’re safe here, you know.” 

Safe. Safe and alive and living because Omar had given his life fighting for the Republic. Because millions of people like Omar had given their lives fighting, and she was here, safe in her bed and she had a fiancé and she had a future and she-

“Woah, woah, Ella, sweetheart, breathe!” He slithered off of the bed and knelt in front of her, his hands on his face. He was so good and so lovely and she loved him, she really did, but she didn’t know if she loved him _enough_. She didn’t know if she could say that. “Come on, baby, it’s okay, you’re safe, just breathe for me.”

The clock felt like it was mocking her, every second pushing her further into a space that Omar had never gotten to experience, sending her further and further away from him.

She remembered saying something to Cole, she wasn’t sure what, but she pushed him aside and ran for the door; the room was too small, and too constricting, and she felt too hot and trapped and panicked and she just had to get _out_. She took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the shouts of alarm behind her, navigating the dark estate by memory alone. The front door opened at her approach, keyed to recognise her genetic signature, and she sprinted out into the night, barefoot and clad only in an old shirt and pants; the street lights made puddles of yellow-orange light on the pavement, the roads all but empty at this hour on a weeknight, and she ran.

She was crying, she knew that much, so much that it hurt to breathe when she tried it. She fell to her knees, the impact sending sharp pains up through her legs. What was the point, what was the point of any of it, being a lawyer or helping refugees or getting married or having a family, what was the point of having any of it when the sith were still out there and the war was still going and her brother was still _dead_. 

He was dead, and she was older than him now, and she was wasting the gift his death had given her. 

She cried, and she cried until she couldn’t remember the rest of the night.

____

It all went downhill from there. 

She dropped out of her classes, to the dismay of her teachers, and turned in her resignation at the Refugee Support Network, the humanitarian arm of CorSec that dealt with the ever escalating flood of displaced people fleeing from the tyranny of the sith. She told her parents she was joining the Republic Army, to follow in Omar’s footsteps and fight for the freedoms of everyone. 

They threatened to disown her, just as they had with Omar all those years ago. She packed her things anyway. 

She gave Cole back his ring, and held back the tears until after she’d boarded the shuttle to Coruscant. 

____

The headquarters for the Republic Military Command on Coruscant was much, _much_ bigger than Cole was expecting, which was pretty dumb of him in hindsight. They were almost twenty one years into a galaxy wide war, of course their command HQ was going to be enormous. It filled a good half a sector, mile after mile of warehouses and barracks and hangars and administrative offices- and that was just on the surface. Hell, Coruscant went a long way down, didn’t it? What was to say it didn’t go for miles _down_ as well?

It made his head spin.

He took the wrong taxi to start with and ended up at the wrong end of the sector, so it took him a little over an hour to find the hospital. The Republic Army had some of the best medics in the galaxy, but there was a limit to their resources when your army numbered in the hundreds of millions. Still, it looked fancy. All slick and white and blue, smelling like antiseptic and the cold. 

He hesitated in the lobby, eyeing the weird bronzium art piece in the centre of the room which was- according to the plaque- a tribute to fallen soldiers. He couldn’t even see anything vaguely humanoid in the design, so he guessed that made it interpretive or something. Art, what did he know. 

There was a twi’lek girl in green scrubs smiling brightly at him from the busy reception desk, and he figured he needed actual directions if he was gonna find Ella in this labyrinth. He waited until there was a gap at the counter and stopped in front of her. 

“Good afternoon, sir! Are you here for the thirty-fifth battalion medicals?”

“I-uh.” He glanced down at himself, and his work stained CorSec gear. He hadn't bothered to stop off at home to get changed before jumping on a shuttle, so he probably passed for a trooper; ancestors knew, there was a riot of different insignias and division colours out in the streets on the way here. “Actually, I’m here to see a patient? I got an urgent call, I was registered as next of kin?”

“Oh, my apologies sir, which department were they a patient of?”

He felt his ears go red. “I don’t actually know,” he said awkwardly. “I got a bit panicked when I got the call.”

She made a sympathetic expression. “I’ll see if I can find them on file, do you have your government issued ID please sir?”

He handed over his datacard as she typed, listing off Ellaz’s full name and date of birth. Hell, he was worried sick about her, but he was still so fucking bitter- it hadn’t even been a year since the breakup, but here he was dropping everything in his life in a heartbeat because something had happened to her? He was a fucking doormat. 

“Thank you for that, sir,” she said, passing back his datacard. She perused the screen. “Alright, it looks like Private Hervoz is in Building Seven, Ward Five. She's in room thirty-five, obstetrics. What you’ll wanna do is go back out the front door and across the plaza, take a right in front of the fountain and follow the boulevard down til you get to a smaller building with another fountain out front. There’s a big silver seven above the door, can’t miss it- there’s another desk in the lobby there, they should be able to direct you from there if you have trouble.”

Tucking his card back in his wallet, he smiled wearily at her. “Shouldn’t be a problem, thanks.”

“You’re welcome, sergeant.”

He was halfway across the plaza, internally repeating the instructions to himself so as not to forget them, when he slowed to a halt, his brain faltering on one word.

Obstetrics? She’d said obstetrics, hadn’t she? As in, like-

_Babies._

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore, breaking into a sprint.

It all passed in a bit of a blur- he found the building, somehow, and he ignored the calls of greeting and then alarm as he sprinted past the nurses in the lobby. There was a lift, and his fingers were shaking when he tried to stab at the buttons for the right floor. The hallways were so confusing- why were hospitals never in straight lines, why did the hallways go in so many different winding directions?- but he found ward five and he was still running as he counted past the doors, looking for thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four and-

There. Thirty-five. 

He all but lunged through the doorway, heedless of the shouts he could hear behind him, and came screeching to a halt at the sight that met him on the other side of the door. 

Ellaz was there, asleep in a bed, the white sheets making her dark skin look all the richer as she lay against them. There was an IV line in her arm, and she was wearing one of those shitty hospital gowns with the ugly patterns on it, and stars above and below, she was still beautiful. She’d broken his fucking heart and she was still beautiful, drooling onto a hospital pillow. 

And beside her bed was a much smaller piece of furniture, some kind of crib on wheels with some fancy monitors attached to it. There was a baby in it. A _baby_.

In somewhat of a daze, he went to step forward, and was all but tackled from behind. “Sir! This is a military hospital, you are not authorized to have access to this facility!” 

The noise of the scuffle woke them both, mother and child, and Ellaz froze the moment she saw him there. “Let go of me,” he snarled, shaking off the guard as they tried to drag him to the door. “I’m the father, I have a right to be here!” He paused as he looked at Ellaz, the sounds of the child- his child?- starting to squall in the background. “Unless you called me all this way to tell me I’m _not_ the father, and to rub it in my face some more?”

Her face dropped, and her eyes were already bright with tears; she looked away, but not before he saw the immense grief and guilt in her face. “You’re the father, Cole,” she whispered. 

He pulled his arm free of the guard, glaring at them through their tinted visor. “Great,” he said loudly, turning back to Ellaz, “and it didn’t occur to you at any point in the last- what, seven months, I guess?- to contact me and say _‘oh, by the way Cole, I know I broke your heart and told you I could never marry you, but it turns out I’m carrying your child, and I’m going through with the pregnancy’_? Or did you just figure you wanted to fuck my life up some more by springing it on me at the last minute?”

That was his baby crying, he had a baby, he had a child, he was a _father._

Ellaz started crying in earnest, and another guard appeared in the doorway, accompanied by two nurses. “Sir, we cannot allow you to stay on the premises while you’re causing distress to our patient. Please remove yourself or you will be arrested.” 

“I’m causing distress to her? What about what she’s doing to me? Aren’t I allowed to be upset?”

“I’m sorry, Cole,” she said, and her voice broke his heart. Too bad she’d broken it a real long time ago now. 

“You’re sorry? You’re _sorry?_ Is sorry gonna take back the last year of my life, and all the nights I cried alone in our bed? Is sorry gonna take back all the humiliation and the shame-”

“I’m _sorry_ , Cole,” she said, louder this time, in between her sobs.

“Sir, this is your last warning.” 

He tried to cross over to the bed, but they both put a hand on his shoulders and kept him in place. He gritted his teeth, and deliberately lowered his voice in an attempt to sound calmer. “Ellaz,” he said, “why didn’t you tell me?”

She put a hand up to her mouth, and he only just heard the words muffled from behind her fingers. “I need you to take her home for me.”


	4. Chapter 4

When he realised she’d finally trailed to a halt, her story at a rather abrupt end, Aric was at a bit of a loss for words. It was such a monumental... _confession_ , he supposed, far more private and vulnerable than he’d expected from her when he’d come in here to confront her. She’d talked about her family from time to time over the last few years, and he hadn’t picked up on any of the clues that it might not have been all sunny back home; in hindsight, he felt a bit like an idiot for that. 

Not that he would have ever asked, granted, it wasn’t his place to go prying into his commander’s personal life, but... 

“You’ve got a daughter?” he asked quietly, at a loss for what else to take away from her story. She’d just offered him _everything_ , Elders help him, she’d all but gutted herself to show him all the secrets she was carrying. He felt a little overwhelmed, truth be told, a little rubbed raw from the trust it implied. 

Ellaz smiled faintly, the sound she made with her nose clearly meant to be some kind of exhausted laugh. “Her name is Jaiya,” she said, her voice hoarse from talking for so long. “She’ll be seventeen this year.” 

“Hell, sir, you should’ve said something earlier.”

She shrugged absently. “Don’t see her much,” she said. “Never did figure out how to be a mother. It was just...” She trailed off, and he waited for her to finish her thought. “Cole was better at it than me,” she said quietly. “And my parents, my family- they helped. They spoil her, actually.”

Hedging his bets, he hesitated for a moment before saying “I’ve got kids. Two, actually.”

That seemed to knock her out of her hollow despair, because she quite visibly shook herself, blinking as she glanced at him. “Say that again?”

Aric chuckled awkwardly. “I’ve got two kids, a son and a daughter.”

She blinked again, a tiny furrow between her brows as she tried to process that. “I thought... don’t cathar mate for life? Or... sorry, that’s probably really insensitive.”

“You? Insensitive? Perish the thought, captain, you’re the very soul of diplomacy.” She laughed briefly at that, and even seeing the momentary glimpse of life in her after the soul-sucking despair she’d descended to talking about her dead brother was more important to him than he wanted to think about. “I don’t know their mothers, there’s no underhanded things going on there. The Republic has a partnership with the Cathar government to stabilize the population and increase the diversity of the gene pool, so when we come of age it’s our duty to, uh...”

“If you say there’s a mating frenzy and I wasn’t invited I’m going to be so upset.”

His ears perked up at the rush of blood to his face, and he was glad at least that most humans didn’t have a clue how to read cathar body language; hell, he wasn’t sure whether he was more embarrassed or more aroused, because while it was a crude suggestion, he sure as hell wasn’t able to stop the momentary flash of fantasy that came from her saying the words _‘mating frenzy’_. 

A man had needs, sometimes. He wasn’t _not_ interested, after all, he just didn’t like to prioritise the pursuit of a relationship ahead of his work.

... not that he was thinking of his commanding officer and a relationship in the same context, absolutely not, she was- she was his commanding officer, after all, and that made her... his commanding officer. Which was definitely not- oh shit, she’d asked him a question. Wait, no she hadn’t, she’d just made a joke about a mating frenzy. And wanting to be invited. Fuck. 

“We donate our, uh, genetic material we’ll call it, to a government agency that holds a database tracking all surviving cathar, and anyone can apply for help conceiving a child. So if they don’t have a mate, or they’ve lost their spouse, or have fertility problems, or their mate isn’t a gender they can procreate with, they’ve got options.”

There. That was clear and scientific and not at all sexy. He wasn’t thinking sexual things at all. Definitely not after she’d allowed herself to be so vulnerable with him. Nope. 

She sniffed loudly, rubbing at her eyes. “Damn, y’all went and chose syringes and science over a mating frenzy, where’s the fun in that?” Her shoulders were slumped and her head was bowed, but she wasn’t quite so... hopeless, perhaps that was the right word, she wasn’t quite so hopeless and lost as she had been before. That blank, empty grief that had been consuming her earlier had retreated, and if they were lucky, maybe that meant they’d lanced the wound for good rather than just covering it up to be a problem for the future. “So like... they tell you you’ve got kids? Or is it all anonymous?”

“They tell you. My son is eight, he has two mothers, I’ve met him once, and my daughter is two. Her father was injured during a tour of duty on the front lines, and they couldn’t manage to conceive by themselves, so they needed a little help. I got a legal confirmation of her birth, but that’s it.” 

Ellaz was quiet for a minute, toying with the empty beer bottle as she passed it between her hands. “Do you ever wish you were more involved in their lives?” she asked hesitantly. 

He shrugged. “They’ve got good parents for now, and good homes. They’re safe, and happy. They don’t need me around for that.” He paused. “You thinking you wanted to be more involved with your girl’s life?”

She shook her head. “No. I mean- fuck, that makes me sound like a bitch.”

“I’m fairly confident that it doesn’t, sir.”

“I wasn’t cut out to be a parent,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t even know- I don’t even know why I kept her, to be honest, when I found out I was pregnant. The easiest thing would have been to just quietly deal with it, move on, you know?” 

Aric cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t presume to know, sir.” 

“Listen to you, so formal, here I am blabbing all my sordid secrets like I’m on a midday talk show and you’re just nodding along all stiffly.”

“Would it help if I occasionally yelled _‘come on down’_ to lighten the mood?” 

“Talk show, Jorgan, not a game show.” She sniffed again, setting the empty bottle on the desk in front of them. “Anyway. That’s neither here nor there, I did keep her, and she’s a good kid. Better for not having me in her life.”

Something about the way she said that, self-deprecating without even flinching, made something in his chest ache. “That’s not true, sir,” he said, and then hesitated. “I mean, captain. I mean... Ellaz, I guess.” 

“You’re sweet for saying that-”

“You’re a damn fine woman, captain, and you’re one of the best soldiers I’ve ever served with.”

She smiled, not quite looking at him. “Being a good soldier and being a good mother are two entirely different things, Jorgan,” she said quietly. “I had a nervous breakdown at the age of twenty and absconded from all my worldly responsibilities, leaving my family to tidy up the mess I’d left behind without so much as a backwards glance. Just because I’m a good soldier doesn’t mean I’m not a goddamn mess of a human being sometimes.” 

“With all due respect, sir, I think anyone claiming not to be a goddamn mess sometimes is a liar.” He clapped her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’ve... done fine.”

Her smile widened, and she let out a small huff of laughter. “What a ringing endorsement of my character growth,” she said, and it seemed to him that she might have been sitting a little closer than when he’d first sat down. He didn’t know whether she’d moved, or whether he’d shifted closer, but her knee was touching his and that definitely hadn’t been the case when he’d joined her at the desk. He didn’t move, though. 

Aric found himself laughing awkwardly too. “Look, sir- Ellaz, I mean, if you don’t want me to say anything to the brass about that whole thing with Vik, then I’ve got your back. If you can promise me you’ll work it out with him, then I won’t stick my nose in it.”

“Aric Jorgan, you wouldn’t be suggesting you’d be willing to go against regs for me, now, would you?” 

She sounded lighter, more like her regular jovial self, and it made him relax just a little bit. He hadn’t realised how worried he was until that moment, wondering whether the war had gotten a little too far under her skin and turned her bad- he’d seen it before, sometimes the violence and the background anxiety just got to you, and he’d seen good soldiers turn into husks who killed without thought. Knowing she hadn’t gone that way eased the fear in his heart, and it was more than a relief to see her smiling again. 

Elders help him, he liked seeing her smile. That was probably going to be an issue sometime in the future, if he didn’t keep that in check. 

“Well, sir, it’s more the fact that I’ve seen you try to punch out a six foot weequay and almost succeed, so I’m more than mildly terrified of you-”

Her laughter had him grinning in return.

“And also, I _really_ don’t like Vik, so frankly it’s no skin off my nose if he’s on the losing side here.”

What happened next took him by surprise- she laughed again, but this time she moved, almost casually leaning in against him until he was forced to move his arm to make space for her, and then... then she was leaning up against his shoulder, and he had his hand on her other shoulder as if he was... _hugging_ her, and it- it felt really nice. 

“I appreciate that, Jorgan,” she said softly. “I wasn’t- I didn’t mean to burden you with my all sob story like that-”

“It was consensual unburdening, sir.” 

“That even a word?” 

“It works for now.” He hesitated a moment, and then stiffly patted her arm, smoothing his hand down the curve of her shoulder; she took that as encouragement to shift closer. “I’m, um... I’m glad, sir. That you talked to me, I mean. It means a lot to have your trust.” 

He felt rather than heard her sigh. “It means a lot to be able to trust,” she said honestly. “And I mean- I’ll be blunt, I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you didn’t run screaming for the hills at it all.”

“You ever talk to anyone about it before?”

“Ugh, yes. Back when Jaiya was born, I had a psych eval. Post natal _and_ post traumatic, do not recommend getting double teamed by those.” 

He snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m considering getting pregnant.”

“Hey, look alright, I don’t make assumptions about what folk are capable of unless I’ve had immediate contact with their funzone. And even then, assumptions just make you an ass.”

“Their _funzone?_ ” 

“You are being deliberately obtuse now, Jorgan.” 

She didn’t smell particularly pleasant, the sweat and the beer and the faint prickly tang that was the lingering residue of the laser fire; he didn’t really seem to find that he minded, though, because this was nice, holding her like that, and he didn’t know when he was ever gonna work up the courage to try something like this again. Something he definitely shouldn’t be considering doing again in the future because she was his commanding officer and fraternization was a serious offence that carried serious consequences. 

Shame he was coming to find he had a bit of a weak spot for older women who could kick his ass til sundown. 

They sat like that for awhile, until he was beginning to wonder whether she’d dozed off, when she finally sighed. “Thank you, Aric,” she said quietly, and he realised her hand was resting on his chest.

He closed his eyes, reminding himself he had to stay detached. “You’re welcome, Ellaz.”

Well, it wasn’t like using her name was going to change things at all.


End file.
